You made it!

30 days of looking inward and taking action. 30 days of baby steps toward a life you’ll love when your kids are bigger, whatever stage of parenting you’re in right now. 30 days of investment in yourself, your family and your future.

But Beyond Baby Boot Camp is just the beginning of your Beyond Baby journey! Today I want you to think about how you can carry this motivation and inspiration forward by building habits and routines around caring for yourself and focusing on your dreams.

Some ideas:

Sign up for a class. Remember the exercise you did yesterday? Maybe there’s a workshop or course that can help push you toward a big dream.

Plan a trip. For me, that first weekend getaway without kids was such a great glimpse of how it would feel to be Beyond Baby – and you can start planning it even if your “baby” is still too little to leave.

Give yourself five. Five minutes, every day, is not too much to ask! If you get in the habit of carving out five minutes to think, plan, and dream every day, you’ll get in the habit of making yourself a priority.

Ask for help. If your commitments and schedule are making it hard to squeeze in self-care, maybe it’s time to delegate.

Consider working through the full Beyond Baby program. For $7.99, you’ll get 40 weeks’ worth of activities and reflective exercises that will put you on the path to a fulfilling, satisfying and full Beyond Baby life. It’s the perfect next step after Boot Camp – just check out the Amazon reviews to see how it’s helped other women! And remember, if you use the code BOOTCAMP you can take $2 off the PDF version (just click “download the PDF” on the sale page.)

It’s been wonderful working through these challenges with you and watching you all focus more time and energy on yourselves, your style, your health, your relationships and your dreams. Remember that the Beyond Baby Facebook Group will continue to be a place for you to explore ideas and discuss challenges as they come up. I hope to see you there!

Over the last 28 days, we’ve made some great progress, haven’t we?

We’ve cleaned up our living spaces, strengthened our most important relationships, and even took some time to focus on style.

Now it’s time to explore some slightly scarier terrain.

When I work with moms, this is often the hardest part of the process for them. Cleaning up our houses, no matter how satisfying, still feels like nurturing, after all. And getting our makeup bag or underwear drawer in shape is pretty simple: not a huge investment in our deeper selves, the parts of us that can be uncertain about what kind of future we might possibly be able to carve out post-motherhood. The parts of us that maybe even feel a little guilty or selfish for thinking about how we’ll create lives we love when we no longer have little people to care for.

But at it’s heart, that’s what Beyond Baby is all about! The bite-sized exercises we’ve done during Boot Camp have been a way to instill new habits and ways of thinking about how we spend our time. Now it’s time to really think about the woman you want to become when you are really Beyond Baby – whether for you that’s happening now or is still five or more years away.

Today, I want you to let yourself dream like crazy.

Is there something you always thought you would do, but have sidelined during the baby years?

A career change? Going back to school? Writing a book? Starting a business? Moving to a farm? Mastering a difficult piece on the piano? Taking in foster kids? Learning to fly an airplane?

Think about it….and then take one small step toward making it a reality.

Maybe you’ll sign up for a writer’s workshop. Check out some books about homesteading. Play some scales. Research college programs. Reach out to someone at work who can mentor you.

There’s no such thing as an overnight success, and dreams are always reached by taking a series of small steps one after the other.

So today, your challenge is to identify that dream, allow yourself to daydream and get excited about it again, and then take ONE small step toward making it a reality.

Can you believe we’re wrapping up the final week of Beyond Baby Boot Camp?

Just two days left. Wow. I hope you’ve been inspired – and have felt challenged to stretch yourself! – over the last four weeks.

Tomorrow and Tuesday we’ll be looking forward, coming up with ways to set yourself up for continued progress going forward. But for now, I want you to look back over the last week’s worth of activities and ask yourself a few questions:

How did you do this week as compared to weeks 1, 2, and 3?

Are you running out of steam? Or just starting to get into a good rhythm?

If you’ve found yourself consistently skipping or getting overwhelmed with certain kinds of projects, which ones are they? Why do you think those particular challenges are more difficult than the others?

That’s it for today! Look forward to two more posts – and be sure to stop by the Beyond Baby Facebook group to discuss your progress!

Saturday is a chance for you to play catch-up, so I’ve listed the week’s activities below in case you missed any. We’ll be back tomorrow with a reflective exercise, and then we’ve got a couple of days to tie up loose ends before Boot Camp is over (sniff, sniff.)

Make sure to stop by the Beyond Baby Facebook group to discuss your progress with other Boot Campers. We’re having a great time over there!

…and then, I let it grow and grow, and got bad in-between maintenance haircuts, and went too long between trims and color, until my in-the-now circa-2001 shag turned into an in-the-never overgrown-Shaggy-from-Scooby-Doo look by 2003.

Maybe you can relate. When you have a new baby getting out to the salon can be a logistical nightmare (can I really squeeze a cut and color in between feedings?) and at some point, you just sort of get used to throwing the whole mess up into a ponytail or barrette and forgetting that you once had an actual…style.

In my case I’d made the classic mistake of assuming a short cut would be easy and low-maintenance; while my short-ish style certainly took no time at all to wash and dry, it required regular cuts to stay fresh and didn’t deal well with the then-frequent 30+ minute lapse between washing and blow-drying.

Now that I’ve had “good” hair for a few years I can see what I was doing wrong back then.

1) I’d gone with an in-between cut that was neither fish nor fowl: not long enough to look good without much styling; not short enough to style in no time flat.

2) I hadn’t planned adequately for maintenance – I always figured I’d call for a cut “when I needed it,” not realizing that mid-length cuts can go from OK to awful in a very short, unpredictable length of time.

3) Daily, I put my hair absolutely last on my priority list, not taking into account how much of a difference just a few minutes of attention could make.

That’s all to be expected when you have tiny children, but sometimes it can become a deeply-grained habit. So when Clara was a couple years old, I decided it was time to quit pussyfooting around with my hairstyle and make a choice one way or the other.

My choice was to chop.

And I’ve never looked back.

It’s been a little longer and a little shorter since that fateful day, but I’ve stuck to the decidedly-short ‘do because I realized that it works. I always look put-together and “done,” and it just works for my style, my personality, and my face.

Have you been waffling between short and long, unwilling to make a choice one way or the other? Or have you just neglected your hair so long that it isn’t even really a “style” anymore?

Today, I want you to start the process of shaking things up and finding a style that will work for your Beyond Baby life.

Your challenge: take at least one baby step on the road to a hairstyle you can feel really good about.

Some ideas:

Look at galleries of haircuts and let your imagination run wild. Who says you have to stick with a mid-length bob or keep your hair ponytail-length just because you’re a mom?

Make an appointment with a trusted stylist (get a referral if you have to) and commit to putting yourself in her hands and seeing what happens. It can be a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Invest in the products, accessories, or tools you need to make the hair you have now work. Maybe your hair troubles could be solved with a better dryer or the right serum.

Play with your hair in front of a mirror for a few minutes. Is there a simple style you haven’t even tried that could help you bridge the gap between cuts?

Rethink your color. If your hair just needs a boost, consider a home dye kit. If you go with a shade or two lighter or darker than your natural color, it’s really hard to mess it up, and I always find that my hair is shiny, bouncy and great-looking for the first week or so after a home dye job.

What’s the current state of your hair? Will you take today’s challenge – and how?

On a scale of 1-10, how tragic is your car’s interior?

If you’re like many moms emerging from the toddler phase, the answer is probably “11.”

It’s survival, right? When you have babies and tiny tots screaming at you from the backseat, you’ll do almost anything to calm them down, including chucking toys, juice boxes and French fries back there.

And when you get home, you’re exhausted. Plus, your arms are totally full trying to get them out of the car seat and safely into the house – there’s no opportunity for cleaning up.

In the full 40-week version of Beyond Baby (don’t forget to use the code BOOTCAMP for $2 off at checkout) one of the weekly projects is giving your much-abused car a thorough cleaning. Since this is supposed to be a manageable DAILY project, though, we’re just going to focus on one area – the spot right under your child’s car seat or booster.

How deep you decide to go with the cleaning is up to you. Maybe you’ll just give all those crushed Cheerios and fossilized fries a quick swipe out with a broom or your hands (I recommend wearing gloves – trust me on this) or maybe you’ll make use of a Shop-Vac or the vacuum at your service station when you gas up.

Either way, be sure to take the extra step to turn the car seat upside down and give it a few shakes. You may be disgusted amazed at the treasures that fall out onto the pavement. (Ahh, yes – NOW you remember that time, in desperation, that you gave your two-year-old your credit card to play with!)

Once you’re on a roll, if you still have some time, grab that sippy cup lid that’s been sliding around on the dashboard and remove the gummy pennies from the console. Got baby wipes on hand? Use them to wipe the dust off your dash and de-gunk your steering wheel.

Moms, we spend a lot of time in our cars – in some ways, they’re our home away from home! Give them a little spiff-up every now and then, and it’ll make your drive much, much more pleasant.

Are you guilty of driving disgusting? Tell us about it here in the comments or at the Beyond Baby Facebook page!

*Don’t drive? Maybe there’s another transportation-related cleanup project you could do today…like the basket under the stroller, hmm?

I remember one day shortly after Clara potty-trained, looking at my five kids and thinking “Holy cow – we’re a family.”

For so long I’d thought of my kids more as individual people to be cared for, one after another: first helpless babies, then busy, daring toddlers, and so on; a collection of small people who needed to be nurtured and kept from hot stoves and figurative snake pits.

But with the chaos of infancy and toddlerhood finally behind us – for good this time – I could see that we are so much more than that. Our family is a unit, made up of many individual and group relationships, an original culture, a unique story made up of our own values and goals and mythology.

Without having to worry about round-the-clock nursing or endless diaper changes, I suddenly felt able to shift my focus to the bigger picture: what sort of family I wanted us to be. I have to admit, after all those years of baby-rearing, it was a pretty revolutionary thought. Not to mention overwhelming.

Can you identify with that feeling? Maybe you have been wanting to create more intention around your family life, but haven’t quite known where to start. Maybe you’re becoming suddenly aware that, while you’ve been immersed in baby-rearing, your older child or children continue to get…older. Maybe you’re becoming more acutely aware of the passage of time and want to make the most of it but just aren’t sure where to start.

If so, you’ll like today’s challenge: I want you to take at least five minutes to think about the kind of Beyond Baby family life you want to create.

Do you want to travel together? Become more involved in your church or community service? Would you like to be a musical family, a literary family, a science-loving family? How do you want to spend your evenings: gathered at home, at sporting events, out in nature? Of course you can’t necessarily dictate what everyone else is going to want to do and you don’t want to be too rigid about what “sorts” of activities you’re going to spend all your time doing, but we parents have a real opportunity to set the tone for the way our families spend our collective time. It’s just more satisfying to do it with intention.

There are a lot of ways to go about this and of course, creating a satisfying, intentional family life is something that happens over weeks, months, and years, not in a single day. But I’ve collected some ideas and resources below that might help you get started.

Choose one, read it, and think about how you might apply it to your own family life:

Happy Families Have Stories - research shows that a “family mythology” leads to more positive childhood memories and a stronger sense of family connection. Here’s why a family narrative is so important – and how to build your own.

How I Learned To Love Cooking Dinner – don’t let the title fool you; this post really isn’t just about food. It’s about how I decided to make regular dinners the backbone of our family life, and what I had to do – and give up – to make them a priority.

Create A Family Manifesto – This will always be one of my favorite articles at Alpha Mom. Such a cool idea, and a fun, easy family project.

I’d love to hear which post you read and what resonated with you. Has it inspired you to start being more intentional about your own Beyond Baby family life? Share here in the comments or discuss at the Beyond Baby Facebook Group!

Basically the soundtrack of my childhood. Also my introduction to motherhood.

When my oldest kids were very small, I spent a lot of time in the car.

A lot of time in the car.
You know how it is: I didn’t always have anywhere specific to go, and taking babies and toddlers into the store or library was sometimes too overwhelming to contemplate.

But I didn’t want to sit around the house all day, either – so at some point during the day, I’d usually strap the boys into the car and head out…nowhere in particular.

And the soundtrack of our lives, as we made the familiar loop from the park to the mall to the drive-thru, was what felt like an endless loop of Oscar, Grover, Bert, and Ernie.

At first I’d tried to keep up popular music, but after a while it just seemed easier to crank up something the kids loved and zone out for a while. And since I don’t, in general, love kids’ music, I relied on favorite tunes from my own childhood – cassette recordings of some of the best classic Sesame Street albums – to get me through those long, meandering drives.

It worked…more or less. I really do love me a rousing rendition of “Rubber Duckie,” so listening to it eighteen times a day wasn’t too torturous.

But while I am generally a walking encyclopedia of pop culture references and top 40 lyrics, there is a huge block of time from those days of my life – concentrated around the years 1998-2000 – that are just a blank for me. People will play some song or other or mention a TV show or book that came out around that time, and I just stare at them uncomfortably, feeling like a foreigner or an alien. I got nothin’. Well, nothin’ except “Has Anybody Seen My Dog?”

I think we all go through this phase, right? It’s normal, and serves a purpose. But at some point, you find yourself bopping along to kids’ music in the car and then realize there are no kids in the car. Or you want to speak semi-intelligently about a new TV series or movie at a party, and all you can come up with are theories about Max and Ruby’s parentage or whether or not you thought Hans was a believable villain in Frozen.

It’s natural for kids’ entertainment to rule our lives for a length of time, but at some point, you’re ready to start consuming something slightly more sophisticated. The problem is, when you’ve fallen out of the habit, you might have to give yourself a gentle push back toward adult TV, movies, literature, or music.

Today’s challenge: find one source of “grown-up” media and figure out a way to make it part of your day.

Some ideas:

Subscribe to a meaty newspaper or interesting magazine

Look up a new TV series on Netflix

Sign up for an interesting email newsletter (and while you’re at it, unsubscribe to one you no longer read or need)

Ask a friend for a book recommendation and put it on hold at the library or purchase on your Kindle

Go to a streaming music service like Pandora or Spotify and try a channel that sounds interesting – even if you don’t know any of the music

Is there a phone call weighing heavy on your mind right now?

You know the one. The appointment you need to make to get your hair cut, or your teeth cleaned. Or the voice mail you need to return from an estranged relative or the library (yes, it’s time to admit that book is hopelessly lost.)

I know how it goes. When you’re deep in “baby mode,” those calls start slipping through the cracks. I know what it’s like to be stuck in a chair nursing for hours with phone juuuust outside my reach. Nobody wants to wake a sleeping baby by calling the dentist. And when you finally do get some time to yourself, do you really want to spend it listening to hold music?

Slowly the unanswered voicemails and “should calls” start to add up. And while it’s normal to get buried in them for a while, at some point you have the time, space, and energy to climb out…it’s just that by that point, you might have gotten in the habit of not answering or returning calls.

Let’s remedy that today.

Your challenge: make a phone call you’ve been putting off.

It might be to schedule a doctor or dentist appointment, get a bank fee reversed, or negotiate a better rate on your credit card. Maybe you’ll check in with a friend or finally schedule an appointment to use that massage gift certificate you got when you were pregnant.

I know from experience that after a long period of phone avoidance, getting that one call out of the way can feel like a huge step on the road to phone functionality again. So make the call today! And then tell us about it in the comments here or on the Beyond Baby Facebook group.

Wow – we’re done with the third week of Beyond Baby Boot Camp.

You’re making an investment in yourself, which can feel uncomfortable at times. Let’s all remember that when you’re happier, more inspired and better rested, you’re naturally a more effective, more engaged mom and a healthier role model for your kids.

I’m proud of you!

On Sundays, we take a look back at the past seven days and do a little reflecting. This is the time to pull out your journal or a piece of paper, or open Word or your blog dashboard and jot down your thoughts and feelings about how the week went for you.

I’d like you to answer these questions:

Did you follow through on all the challenges this week? If not, why not?

Look back over the last three weeks and see which activities you’ve been able to do most easily, and which have been a challenge. Do you see a pattern? For example, do you have an easier time committing to activities that have to do with cleaning and organizing, but a harder time focusing attention on your own health or style, or vice versa? Why do you think that is?

What goals would you like to meet during the last week (or so) of Boot Camp? Is there a particular area where you’d like to challenge yourself now that we’re heading into the home stretch?